all things vmware, cloud and virtualizing business critical applications

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This site is dedicated to VMware Virtualisation and Private, Public and Hybrid Cloud, with a focus on Business Critical Applications (Tier One Apps).

The name originates from the name given to New Zealand by the indigenous Māori people i.e. “Aotearoa”. Aotearoa translates to: ao = cloud, tea = white and roa = long or “Land of the Long White Cloud”. So the name Long White Virtual Clouds is particularly fitting given that VMware is one of the leaders in the Cloud Computing industry and the author lives in New Zealand.

New Zealand and Australia have arguably the highest virtualization rates in the world and we have been virtualizing Business Critical Applications and executing Unix to x86 virtualization projects for a number of years on a large scale. One of the aims of this site is to demystify the migration and virtualization of traditional Unix systems and business critical applications. The author will provide real world experience on the technical and process aspects of critical applications and large scale virtualization projects. Topics covered will include design, quality assurance, performance optimisation, troubleshooting and implementation and migration planning, and any other relevant topics thrown in for good measure.

You should read your specific Oracle contract as it will tell you what you need to do. In many Named User scenarios you may need to have 25 named users per processor license equivalent, i.e. 25 named users per 2 x86 cores. So on a 20 core host you would need 250 named users to be licensed. On a 16 core host you would need 100 named user licenses. Let's assume for a minute you have 16 cores per host on x86, based on the core factor of 0.5, with 300 named users you could run the application and database on 3 servers. But you need to ensure that the application and database only ever run on the three servers that are licensed, unless the 10 day rule is applied. Using affinity rules is hard to do with ESXi and it's easy to make mistakes, which could be very costly. So a dedicated cluster where the Oracle software is isolated and runs is the best way to go. But this is all based on your contract, and you need to understand what it says and what the restrictions are. Different products can be handled differently. It is recommended that you seek your own independent legal and contract advice if you are unsure. Try and keep things a simple as possible, and as isolated as possible, so that you don't get surprised during the Oracle audit that will happen at some time.

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The views expressed anywhere on this site are strictly mine and not the opinions and views of VMware or anyone else. All content is provided without any form or warranty explicit or implied, for informational purposes and for use at your own risk.